Tuesday, January 26, 2010

FACT: I'm not a huge jelly doughnut fan. The jelly doughnuts I grew up with were of the DD Munchkin variety--small powdered sugar covered numbers with a dollop of squishy, sugary fruit filling. Thanks, but no thanks. But when my friend and fellow jelly doughnut doubter, Erin, blogged about discovering the perfect jelly doughnut at Almondine Bakery, I knew I had to give jelly doughnuts another try...

Upon our first visit to Almondine in Park Slope Lawman and I learned two lessons...1) fried faux pas alert: the staff does not refer to the jelly doughnuts as "doughnuts" they are raspberry beignets (visions of the cheesy classic Polaner All Fruit commercial)2) you snooze, you lose out on beignets. They make them in the morning and when they are gone (usually within an hour) they are gone.

Our second visit just further confirmed lesson two. If you go in the afternoon there will not be beignets waiting for you.

On our third visit, this past Sunday morning at 11:30am, we were finally rewarded with a case full of beignets. Not wanting our beignet to be lonely, we decided to spring for pain au chocolat as well.

The beignet was utterly delicious. The dough itself was soft, airy and perfectly sweetened and the filling, oh the filling. The photo below is a little misleading because it looks like the beignet is only about half filled. In reality there were probably only about 2 bites that were mostly fillingless. I'm not sure how they managed to fit so much raspberry jam goodness in there, but I'm glad they did.

The pain au chocolat was a nice second breakfast treat. The pastry was light and flakey and they didn't skimp on the chocolate. I would definitely order both again (and soon!).